April 26, 2004

(Updated) Other Francesconi Campaign Finance Reporting Errors

Some 'Contributor Aggregate' Information Missing

Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.

We will be sure to do this for other candidates as well, but as per our earlier post, we're reading through the 1st Pre-Election campaign finance reports now that they've been posted online, and we started with those of Jim Francesconi.

Since questions (both large and small) have been raised about his campaign's finance reports, and since they tried to make an issue out of the reports of an opponent, we'll start by offering a couple of errors we've noticed so far.

On February 27, 2004, local real estate bigwig Melvin Mark gave Francesconi $125. Problem is, the campaign forgot to fill out the "contributor aggregate" portion of this entry, which needed to happen because way back on November 5, 2003, Mark gave Francesconi $1,000.

While the contributor aggregate entry for the Februrary 27 contribution should read "$1,125" it instead remains entirely blank.

On page 61 of the 2004 Campaign Finance Manual, it reads in part:

The aggregate is the total amount of contributions received from one contributor during all the accounting periods for one election. This includes the first pre-election, second pre-election, post-election and supplemental accounting periods for one election. The aggregate must be completed on each report.

There's also a second such instance (and may be more, but Francesconi's report, well, is not small).

On December 26, 2003, one Christina Lee contributed $50.00 to Francesconi. And then on February 27, 2004, Lee contributed $125 -- but the campaign neglected to fill out the "contributor aggregate" slot for the entry, which should read (but doesn't) "$175" total.

On the scale of campaign finance "irregularities," there are small potatoes, perhaps. Although one would think with a contributor such as Melvin Mark, we should be able to easily detect just how much he gives. Nonetheless, since the Francesconi campaign made finance reports a campaign issue, we thought we'd toss them a couple more items on which to chew.

Disclosure: PORTLAND COMMUNIQUE accepts political advertisements, and currently runs ads from the Francesconi campaign.

April 26, 2004

Update

As dutifully pointed out in the reader comments by Susan Francois of the City Elections Division, the Francesconi campaign has until May 6 to correct any errors in their CFRs without them being violations.

Comments (2)

Susan Francois on 26 Apr 2004

FYI - all committees have until the deadline in their exam letter from the Auditor's Office to file amendments to correct any irregularities to their reports. My exam letter to the Jim Francesconi for Mayor Committee lists a deadline of May 6.

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The Portland City Auditor's office has done an amazing thing. It has put on line (as pdf douments) all the campaign finance reports of all the candidates in the upcoming municipal elections. It's a gold mine of information about who's...